For many years, most image capture systems needed a sheet with a “patch code” inserted before each new document in order to indicate the beginning of a new document when scanning batches of documents containing varying numbers of pages. Patch codes are not bar codes. Patch codes are the special, large, black stripes that are sometimes pre-printed on forms, such as health claim forms. There is a standard for patch codes, which is readily available from, for example, the Internet. There are three (3) varieties of patch codes, but in every case a patch is a pattern of parallel, alternating bars and spaces that is printed on a page. Scanners and scanning software can detect these patch codes and trigger the scanning process to recognize that this is the first page of a new document or to separate batches of related documents from each other. The downside is that the patch code must be either pre-printed on the document, taking up valuable space, or, more commonly, pre-printed on a separate sheet of paper, which is inserted manually between each document or batch of documents prior to scanning and then manually removed after scanning. In addition, the marking must often be located in the same location on each document. If there is a variance in the location of the marking, entire batches of documents may be unreadable.
More recently, image capture software has been developed that allows the use of pre-printed bar codes to indicate the lead page of a new document within a batch. The bar codes may also indicate additional pages in documents that do not contain varying numbers of pages.
Accordingly, there is a need for document processing which is not dependent on patch or bar codes, does not require pre-printing, does not need manual insertion and removal of extra pages and does not constrain the application of markings.